With the Darkness Fed
by Summertime-Snow
Summary: It occurred to Stiles just how absurd it was that he could feel snow landing on him through his clothes. "Stiles," a soft voice breathes, caressing his ear like the sweetest of melodies. "What do you feel?" His head snapped to his right, looking his creator in her emerald eyes. "Everything, Lydia." he said. "Everything." She grins, fangs glistening in the cold, pale light.


**_Chapter One_**

_The snow danced in flurries around him, brushing softly against his clothes and sending small vibrations across his skin. It occurs distantly to Stiles just how absurd it was that he could feel_ snow _landing on him through his clothes when not too long ago he had to change the vibrate alert settings on his phone to fullest to even register the announcement of a message._

_"Stiles," a soft voice breathes, like music caressing his ear. "What do you feel?"_

_He takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. He feels the blood gush through his veins – icy at first but searing hot with raw instinct by the time he exhales. A strange sensation in his eyes indicate to him that his irises were no longer their usual cognac brown. The pinpricks beneath his gums were all he needed before his head snapped to his right, looking his creator in her emerald eyes._

_"Everything, Lydia." he said. Everything."_

_She grins, fangs glistening in the cold, pale light._

* * *

"Let me tell you a story."

Stiles snuggled deeper into the mattress, wrapping himself more securely in his favourite fluffy blanket and curling the corner of it in his hands. He loved Lydia's stories – they were always the best. She always incorporated them as characters into the tales; she would be the Queen of the fairies or the Princess of Mermaids, and Stiles would be her best friend and royal advisor (not that Lydia Martin would ever need advice on anything, ever) or, if he had been a super-duper extra good friend that week, the Prince that won her heart.

Friday night sleepovers were the highlights of Stiles' week. More often than not it'd be Stiles, Scott and Lydia camped over at the Martin's, but on rare occasions like tonight, the venue had shifted to the Stilinski's. Lydia's parents were headed to Seattle for a weekend conference and Mrs. McCall had called earlier that week to inform them that Scott was down with chicken pox. Stiles had been devastated by the fact that he would not be able to see one of his best friends for two weeks and had all but clung to Lydia throughout school. Not that she minded, anyway, but she would never admit to Stiles that she missed Scott too.

Friday could not have come around soon enough for the two best friends, and when Lydia stepped into the doorway of Stile's house, pink comforter and branded overnight bag in tow, Stiles nearly knocked her over with the force of his "welcome to my humble abode" hug. Lydia rolled her eyes, tossed her strawberry blonde curls over her shoulder and barked a half-hearted threat for ruining her bag to her sheepish best friend. She couldn't keep the corners of her lips from rising.

Stiles gazed in fascination and wonder at his best friend, taking in every familiar feature on her flawless face. To him, she was absolutely perfect. They had grown up together and she was undoubtedly one of his very favourite people in the whole world.

_Tonight's story told of the moon and stars; of lovers and wolves and children of the night. He remembered her telling him on Monday about reading an old encyclopaedia on folklore she had found in her grandfather's library and knew that the new information her brilliant mind had absorbed were the inspiration for the night's fable. He drank in every word._

_In this story, a cruel twist tore two siblings apart. They were separated for years, though their memories were forever entrapped in the light of the moon and the twinkle of the stars. They never forgot each other, and one day they were to meet again._

_But they were different people when they were reunited. Their lives were no longer one the same. He felt it, every time he was near her. Something about her stillness, a glint in her eyes and flash of her perfect, white teeth that left a strange stirring of unease within him; made every nerve in his body quiver as if preparing to flee._

_He brushed it aside – this was his sister! The girl he had loved all his life, who built lego houses with him in exchange for him helping her brush her dolls' hair (Stiles grinned – he and Lydia had this arrangement once), who helped him clean and dress his wounds and kiss them better. Still, the uneasiness lingered and festered._

_He too, had changed – was changing. She was aware. He wasn't sleeping. Shadows deepened beneath his unfocused eyes and his cheekbones more prominent than before. Once she awoke to the sound of him coughing so hard that when he drew his hand away, it was stained the vivid scarlet of fresh blood. She looked away, buried her head in her pillow and pretended she saw nothing._

"What was wrong with him, Lydia?"

"How many times have I told you not to interrupt my stories, Stiles?"

He considered the question for a moment. "Somewhere between twenty and thirty-five. Not sure."

Lydia rolled her eyes. "Yet you never learn."

Stiles grinned in response. Her very favourite, impish grin.

"He was sick, Stiles. Very sick. And every day she watched him fading and it killed her inside."

Stiles whimpered slightly and clutched his pillow a little closer to his chest as Lydia launched back into her story.

_One night, she got home to a silent house. It worried her – he was always so loud. There would always be noise wherever he went – music blasting from a radio, a whistled tune from between his puckered lips. It didn't take her long to find him passed out on the cold, tiled floor of the kitchen._

_She knew he was losing him and that thought terrified her. She couldn't let that happen; and she swore she would make him better._

_No matter the cost._

* * *

"Bedtime, kiddos!" Sheriff Stilinski's head popped into the doorway, small smile on his face as he took in the sight on his son engulfed in a sea of sheets, pillows and blankets with little Lydia seated daintily next to him, pink duvet tucked around her legs and pillow propped up against the headboard to lean against.

Stiles groaned loudly, beginning a protest of "but daaaaad" when Lydia interrupted him.

"Yes, Mr. Stilinski." All charming smiles and cherubic dimples, blatantly ignoring the unintelligible muffled grumbling from the pile of sheets beside her. "It's getting late."

The Sheriff shook his head, laughing under his breath. This girl was going places.

"Yes, it is. Good night Lydia. Night, Stiles."

He smiled as he shut the door to a chorus of "Night dad!" and "Good night, Mr. Stilinski!".

* * *

"Lydia. Lyddiaaaaa…"

"What, Stiles?"

"Are you awake?"

She turned towards him just so he could see the roll of her eyes.

"What happens in the story? Did she manage to save him? How? Are they both okay?"

"Oh my god, Stiles."

"What?"

"Go to sleep."

"But Lydiaaa. I can't! I need to know how the story ended."

"Whoever said it has or hasn't ended?"

Stiles was quiet, undoubtedly pondering the question. It was a comfortable silence in the moonlight flooded glow of Stiles' childhood bedroom, as familiar to one child as it was to the other. Eventually Lydia sighed and turned to face Stiles, small hand instinctively reaching out to run her fingers through his untameable hair.

"Stiles," she whispered. "I need to tell you something."

"Hmm?"

"I overheard mum and dad the other night. I don't think they wanted me to know but I heard them anyway." She gulped. "I think… Stiles, I think we're leaving Beacon Hills. I'm leaving Beacon Hills."

* * *

He was wandering the Streets of San Francisco on his own when the first episode happened. One moment he had paused in front of a newsstand to flip through a photography journal and the next he was blinking awake into the surgical light suspended above him, various tubes jutting out his arms and chest. He hears the beeps from the machine picking up the rapid increase of his heart rate and almost immediately, he begins to fall back into the darkness as a nurse administers another dose of high-potency sedatives.

Allison and Isaac are in his ward when he comes to again. The first thing he does is to beg them not to tell his dad. It takes a lot of convincing, but he gets two incredibly reluctant promises from both of them, sworn on the life of their firstborn child. He eats the food and medication they give him and entertains himself with the cheap tabloids and mindless reality shows provided as he awaits diagnosis. When nothing is detected, he is discharged with orders to closely monitor his vitals.

The third time he was in New York. He woke up in an alleyway, wallet and watch nowhere to be seen. The police, whilst sympathetic, had nothing to construct an investigation with and sent Stiles on a taxi home with cab fare and a fleet of apologetic glances.

Somewhere between then and the fifth incident, the doctors made their diagnosis. Frontotemporal dementia. Stiles felt every tether he had to his life snap, leaving him floating in an abyss of emptiness. He had witnessed how this condition progressed – how it took hold until the mind occupying the brain was no longer your own. It was how he had seen his mother die, how his father had watched the love of his life slowly fade away. There was no way Stiles was ever going to let his dad find out about this.

He made an impulse decision to leave town and work and _life_ for a few days. He rang Finstock and told him he needed two weeks' leave, effectively immediately. He didn't even wait for a yes or no before hanging up. He was too good at what he did to be at risk of losing his job, but even if he did he couldn't find it in himself to even care. He dialled his Dad's home number, getting to voicemail and leaving a message that he was going to be away for an extended period on some volunteer work. He apologised for the short notice and that he'd tell him all about it when he got back. He swallowed down the lump of guilt that arose in his throat and said "love you" as he hit the end call button.

Given his lack of sleep, he opted not to drive. He may not have had much thought for what might happen to himself, but Stiles was never going to consciously put anyone's lives at risk by getting behind a wheel in his state. He searched through his disoriented brain for ideas on where to go. That night as he lay in bed, he suddenly remembered a place he had once visited with Lydia and her parents all those years ago. He had no idea why that place had come up, or how his brain that could hardly manage to set the coffee machine working each morning these days could regurgitate a memory from his childhood so vividly, but he was on the first flight to Alaska the very next day.

That was how Stiles found himself standing by a stream, damp leaves in varying shades of ochre, amber and vermillion beneath his feet and the crisp autumn breeze blowing softly across his face. The gentle trickling of the stream was the only sound to be heard for miles. In the uncluttered silence with pure, clean air in his lungs Stiles thought – hoped – that he might finally be able to get some sleep. He remembered his national park, though it had never felt so lonely in the past. He could almost hear the shadows of children's laughter as they chased each other through the trees - cheeks flushed, boots soggy from the snow. It was just Lydia Martin and Stiles Stilinski against the rest of the world.

Now he stood alone. With a sigh, he seated himself on a boulder nearby, taking in his surroundings and addressing the pervasive problem that had been on his mind since the diagnosis. How the hell was he going to tell his dad?

There he sat, watching sunlight dance off the crystalline water surface until the shadows of dusk extinguished them like a draught to a candle's flame.

* * *

"Hey. Wake up. Hey. Come on wake up!" a voice seeped into his subconscious, steady and calm but with increasing urgency. "Wake up!"

A hand was patting his cheek, smoothing across his forehead and brushing wet bangs off his forehead.

Wait. Why was he wet?

Consciousness came back at him in a flood. The first thing that Stiles registered was a pale face with worried eyes hovering above him. The second was that he was soaked from head to toe, and positively _freezing_.

"Hnnngg.." he groaned, the sound interrupted by his teeth chattering.

"What the hell were you doing in the water? It's forty degrees out!" Now that he was a little more aware of his surroundings, the voice was very distinctly female. And angry. Uh oh.

Stiles turned to properly look at the girl for the first time, and had to blink several times to make sure he wasn't dreaming. There was hardly any light, the sky a darkening silver, but he would have recognised that face anywhere.

"Ly- Lydia?"

She had grown. That was to be expected, of course – they hadn't been in any contact for the last decade. She no longer had a girlish, baby-faced tenderness to her cheeks, but the defined cheekbones and sharp chin of the woman she had come to be. Her hair, still the same flaming auburn that Stiles had always associated as his favourite colour, was tucked behind her ear and stirring gently in the wind. But it was Lydia's eyes that Stiles first recognised. The kind of green that glistened gold in the sun and emerald in the dim light of her bedside lamp. The eyes that were enigmatic and guarded to the world, but never to him. To Stiles her eyes were an open book containing every one of their favourite stories.

Eyes that, for a moment so brief he must have imagined it, flashed a deep crimson.

* * *

Derek had been enjoying his first night off in a week curled up on his couch, a book he'd been slowing working his way through for what felt like forever on his lap and a cold beer in his hand.

He had just about gotten settled and refreshed his memory with a quick skim read of the bookmarked page when his phone rang, shrill and piercing in the quiet of his loft. Derek glanced a look at the caller ID and sighed. Duty calls.

"Hale."

"Look man- Sir, I know you've had a rough week and this is probably the last thing you need to hear right now but-"

"Actually it has, McCall. Been a rough week. And can whatever this is _please_ wait until tomorrow morning 'cause-"

"There's been another one."

Derek froze. Scott must have taken the silence as a sign to continue and so he did.

"Same symptoms, Derek. The same ones you told me to alert you about immediately if I ever chanced upon again. And I did. So here I am letting you know. No hard feelings for calling you on your day off then, kay?"

Derek felt the need to interrupt the nervous laughter of a new agent afraid of losing his job.

"You at the coroner's?"

"Y-yes Sir."

"I'll meet you there in twenty."

The moment after he hit the end call button, Derek was already dialling in a new set of numbers. He put the dialler on speaker phone, setting it on his coffee table as he took a long swig of his beer on his way to the kitchen. Opening the cupboard under the sink, he pulled out a silverware box and swept a hand over the brushed aluminium lid. He set it on the kitchen counter, tipping the rest of his beer down the sink before wiping his hand on his pants and carefully opening the box.

He grabbed two insignificant-looking paring knives and a tightly-wound coil of thin, shiny wire. Finally, he lifted up the tray of knives and various silverware – a false bottom – to reveal the small pistol and eleven accompanying bullets. His chest constricted at the sight. He smoothed the tips of his fingers across the smooth, cold metal of the narrow barrel, watching the condensation the warmth of his fingers drew to the glossy surface.

The lack of a dial tone, only to be replaced by a gruff "Argent" coming from his living room snapped Derek out of his daze. He replaced the tray above the pistol and shut the box, sliding it back to its place under the sink before making his way back to the living room with the knives still in his hands.

"Yeah it's me." He called out as he reached for his phone.

After a pause; "What's it this time?"

"I'm not sure if it is what I think. But just in case I don't get back, I needed someone to know that I was, that I _am_ about to go after something."

"Derek," followed by a sigh, exasperated and if Derek were to be perfectly honest, sad. "You and I both know we have this agreement, and we're men of our word. If anything happens I will honour my promise and tell your family what happened. But I really, really would rather avoid that house visit."

"Thank you, Chris. I'll be fine." He rolled his eyes even though he knew the effect would be lost over the phone, twirling and weaving the two blades absently through his fingers. "We'll catch up soon yeah? When this is all over."

"I certainly hope so." Came the reply, grave and sincere. It caught Derek off guard, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

"Thanks again. Bye."

"Yeah. Bye."

The line went dead. Derek stepped out of his sweat pants and into the pair of black slacks draped neatly over his dining room chair. He grabbed his white shirt and after a second's thought, slipped it on over the wife beater tank he was already wearing. He tugged uncomfortably at the collar as he slid on his work's standard issue leather shoes. Omitting the tie, he snatched up his phone, wallet, jacket and gun belt before leaving – knives already tucked securely away in his jacket.

He didn't live far from work. Derek was beginning to wonder if that had been a conscious decision when he had bought the place, whether part of him had known all along that he would be immersing his whole life into the job. It wasn't a comforting thought.

Yet, Derek was more than aware that he needed this job just as much, if not more, than the job needed him. It kept him busy - his mind occupied and body conditioned. He relished the nights he'd all but stumble back into his loft, physically wrecked and mind so exhausted from the day's work that he'd pass out on his couch and wake up sore and stiff but well-rested nonetheless.

Those were the only nights he didn't dream.

He pulled into the lot of the morgue not ten minutes later. Scott was, as he had promised, waiting for him in the coroner's office. Beside his puppy-like associate stood the still, composed figure of Coroner Deaton. He exuded an undeniable aura of calm intellect. Every glance from the man seemed calculated, scanning; as if he was glancing into one's soul and uncovering each and every one of their deepest, darkest secrets. Derek, having known Deaton for years, was more than familiar with the sensation – it wasn't as if he still had any secrets left to keep from him. Scott, on the other hand, was visibly uncomfortable. His hair messy, suit rumpled, nervously twirling his battered tie in his hands – but his face still lit up in a mixture of relief and hopefulness when Derek entered the office. Derek had grown to associate the enthusiasm as a side-effect of his young colleague's eager-to-please disposition. He had to admit – it was hard to hate on the new guy when the new guy was always trying so damn hard.

"Deaton." He greeted. "Scott."

Scott opened his mouth to speak, but Deaton beat him to it.

"Derek. Sorry for such a late call up. How are things?"

"The usual. So. Tell me about this case."

"Female. 23. Exa- exsan… drained of blood." Scott piped in, tripping up a little over his words and flushing a little in embarrassment. Deaton cast him an amused glance before turning his attention back to Derek.

"Like Scott here so kindly added – Our Jane Doe in there was exsanguinated. No blood left in her system, no visible lacerations or wounds significant enough to account for such substantial quantities of blood loss. No signs of trauma apart from some light bruising on her inner forearm – nothing to suggest excessive violence. For the physical state of the corpse, she could be sleeping."

Derek expressed no emotion, but there was a knowing flash in Deaton's eyes that told him all he needed to know. They needed to talk - alone.

"Scott." Derek said evenly, clearing his throat.

"Yes sir?"

"Could you go get us some coffee please?"

"Sure thing, man- sir!" Scott grinned, eager to be given something to do. His exit of the office was a flurry of limbs and apologies about a slamming door, but soon enough he was far enough away that the two men could speak without risking being overheard.

"Derek, this is the third case in the past two weeks. And these are only the ones we've found; not including the two you discovered in the woods last week."

"I know." He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "You said no visible wounds, but I'm assuming you left out the obvious one for Scott's sake?"

Deaton nodded, almost gravely. "Well, yes and no - twin pinpricks parallel and above the jugular. Clean, barely visible to the untrained eye." He paused "We're not dealing with a fledgling here, Derek. The situation may be worse than we'd previously thought."

Derek sighed. "I'll see what I can do."

"Derek I… Look. Don't get yourself hurt."

"But SOMEBODY has got to do something, right? Someone has to protect these people; innocent, good people who have no clue of the living nightmares which have crept their way into reality and they don't deserve to have to deal with all of this."

"Neither do you." Deaton muttered, so quietly that if Derek's hypersensitive senses had not existed, he probably would not have heard. It sobered him up, just a little.

"I'll be careful. Thank you, Alan." After a pause he added "for everything."

And with that he left the office, the lingering silence ringing with a sombre resonance of finality.

* * *

_Lydia held her best friend's sticky, warm hand through the open car window. She felt overcome with unbearable sadness as she watched his large, amber eyes fill with tears and bottom lip tremble with his effort to keep to his promise of not crying at their farewell._

_She brought their joined hands together and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, then leaned over to press one to his cheek._

_"I love you, Stiles." She whispered. "Goodbye."_


End file.
